Gender: Violence against women – what it means in a society struggling for freedomBy: S. JeyasankarSource: Northeastern Monthly - June 2006
Statistics reveal that violence against women at home is much higher than what is experienced by them at their places of work, or out on the streets. But when concerned people, mostly women, start to speak out on violence against women at home, or domestic violence, there is a loud outcry by men that women are creating chaos within the home and breaking-up families by interfering in matters that are, essentially, between husband and wife, or at most within the extended family.
No one says women should get out of their homes because of domestic violence perpetrated by men, particularly husbands or fathers. But at the same time, the home is not a torture chamber for women. It should be a place where there is love, peace and understanding. Raising the issue of domestic violence is to make the home become a place of love for all members of the family.
It should be the same story when it comes to places of work. Work places are not only for men but also for women. If anyone is harassed or experiences violence in their work place, the perpetrators must be held accountable. Meanwhile, gender balance of the work place must also be maintained.
The question is: when women face harassment and abuse – especially sexual harassment at the work place – is it reasonable to ask them to leave the place of employment for their own safety or dignity? The answer should be no. On the contrary, the perpetrators should be dealt with and the security and dignity of the victim restored. But restitution, which is a common rule applied whenever injustice is committed, has become an exception for women.
This is the theme of the saga involving the infamous CD with pornographic material that was circulating in the Batticaloa and Ampara districts around the time of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year and sensationalised by the media with palpable glee.
The girl who had allegedly appeared in the porn CD was identified as a native of Sri Lanka’s east and located as working in an NGO or INGO. A story was then fabricated and disseminated with the ingredient of a death threat included, based on the ‘information.’ This was apparently done to safeguard the dignity of the women working in NGOs and INGOs.
But the whole thing boomeranged when it made working women in the NGO sector easy targets in the hands of their own brethren in every sphere of their day-to-day existence – particularly during the Tamil New Year.
The situation took an ugly turn when personal grudges began to be played out under cover of the death threat and the accompanying humiliation. Some individuals identified certain women workers as “the girl” in the porn CD and concocted stories. These rumours gained currency and began to haunt the families of many young girls working in NGOs and INGOs. Thus the misplaced attempt at preserving female ‘virtue’ led to a tragedy in the lives of working women in this sector.
A girl committed suicide, and there was talk of other girls too contemplating taking their own lives. Whatever it might be, it is undeniable that all the working women and their families in the Batticaloa and Amparai districts who are working in the NGO sector have suffered deep mental distress.
Mothers of young working women in the NGOs and INGOs have also become victims. Mothers not only feel ashamed and humiliated because of the gossip, but fear death threats on their daughters could be carried out. What is more, they fear for their future in societies where even a hint of scandal could lead problems in finding husbands.
Ironically, working women in the NGOs and INGOs did not experience humiliation in the hands of ‘enemies.’ The usual forces resisting enemy atrocities kept silent and treated the issue as a private matter only concerning women.
The character assassination campaign against individual working women in NGOs and INGOs was a way to humiliate them and bring them to disrepute. The representation of these women as ‘loose’ puts their safety and security into question. Apparently, a society’s conventional understanding of safety and security of the individual does not apply to the security of working women in relation to the perpetrators of cultural violence.
Even though the cry of cultural degeneration brought about by the ‘misbehaviour’ of women working in NGOs and INGOs are very loud, no one is bothered about the true identity of the girl or spare a moment of sympathy for the predicament in which she is now. Nor does anyone care about the man who appeared in that particular pornographic CD, or what motivated the perpetrators to do what they did. Instead the incident was brutally exploited to demoralise working women in the NGO sector so as to ‘domesticate’ them.
It is very important to discuss why the working women in the NGOs and INGOs are targeted It’s a very bad symptom of a dangerous sickness and the community must be raise its concerns about it.
Is society nervous about the smart and self-reliant, independent women?
The other important issue is the silence of the males – especially the top brass of NGOs and INGOs despite all these organisations claiming to be gender sensitive and concerned about gender components in their programmes.
It is also interesting to note that important social and political issues in Batticaloa and Amparai raise a host of responses based on ethnic, religious, caste and other differences. On this occasion however, all social groups appeared united in banishing women back to the kitchen.
Because of the strong NGOisation of gender, modern and progressive male intellectuals and male artists usually claim that the issue of gender and feminism are imported (but not modernism or Marxism or nationalism).
Role of print media in this regard is very critical. The print media came out as one sided and authorised and legitimised the manipulation of the invisible hand which affected the dignity of working women in the NGO sector. It is very sad to note the role played by the print media in that it failed to take into account the suffering of the victims of the ‘information manipulation.’
The interesting side of the story is how the print media in English, which carried articles on the problem regularly, mostly on their front pages, represented the issue. Not a single media institution was concerned about the vulnerable situation of working women in the NGO sector. Nor were they interested in applying rigorous standards of investigative journalism that they apply to politics or in relation to political killings.
The collective violence waged against women working in NGOs and INGOs in the Batticaloa and Amparai districts is a serious issue and has to be dealt with. And it has to be dealt with as the problem per se and not on how it affects the political and ideological persuasions of the various actors – individual and collective (and mostly male) – who have been using such issues for selfish ends. The manner in which it is dealt would also be a good yardstick to evaluate the true nature of a society which has been involved in a freedom struggle for more than three decades.
